Over the years, the trait of my husband’s that I’ve worried about most because of its potential effect on our children and their children’s children, if not understood properly, is his tendency to be unreasonably reasonable. When one parent vexes over all of the small stuff and consistently avoids being emotionally and conversationally intimate with his family, that’s problematic for many reasons. It’s a very difficult thing in the arena of parenting.
Our boys have watched their example—the man, the head of the family, the breadwinner—remark anxiously, daily, sometimes every few minutes, about how something needs to be done a certain way or else something negative is going to happen. Children want to trust their father, so will they live fearful lives by trusting a father who is fearful? What’s worse, I think, is that our kids have watched me dismiss their dad’s anxieties time and again. At first, I used to get anxious myself about all of my husband’s anxiety. Then, I got more casual, sending nonverbal cues to the boys that whatever their dad was gripped by was not a big deal, nothing to feel anxious about themselves. What does that say to a child? I think it says a lot. Not to trust their father’s judgment. To dismiss what matters to their father. That what’s important to him need not be important to them. That their parents are not a parenting unit. That in some instances they won’t know which parent’s judgment to trust. That in times when they are disciplined, they should question why and whether it is reasonable.
Disciplining gets hairy when one parent is an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist and the other sees nothing wrong when certain things happen. Umpteen times, my husband has gotten all riled up over some- thing one of the boys did that caused some superficial irritation for him, like scattering the wood chips outside with a remote-controlled car or getting a few fingerprints on a clean window. They have been very good about following their father’s “rules” throughout life, and I think it’s okay for kids to forget something trivial now and then, so I’m more focused on whether the kids are making moral choices and talking kindly to one another. Over time, because the boys have seen and heard me dismiss my husband’s superficial needs, and because they know our story, they know their dad is overly particular. But it would sure be nice for them to feel like their mom and dad were on the same page.
Unfortunately, the fact that we don’t align in this way has meant that my husband no longer steps up in times when disciplining is necessary. I feel like I’m always the one telling the kids what to do or what opportunity they lose out on for not following through after being told to do something over and over. My husband has been conditioned over time by my response to him when he disciplines that how he goes about it is wrong. That what he’s getting after them for is ridiculously tiny. Or that the punishment he thinks up is way too much considering the minute thing they did. So he’s given up on stepping in. He’s become totally passive over the years. I feel like I do all the hard emotional work with them. I don’t blame my husband; it’s another one of those “life’s-not-fair” things for both of us when one is eternally concerned with minutiae.
Because my husband only gets riled up about surface things that aren’t just so, that means 99 percent of the time he will get uptight about how something in his environment should look instead of by an injustice or a wrongful action or an unkind word. There are unkind things siblings say to each other during moments of frustration, and he might never chime in to parent our kids in those situations. But if a delivery truck accidentally drives over a small patch of green grass next to our gravel driveway, he’s livid.
My husband not only leaves the hard emotional work with the kids up to me, he pretty much avoids talking with them about anything of depth. I’m the one who asks them questions. I’m the one they come to with theirs. It’s not that they avoid him, they don’t. He knows their hearts, he just doesn’t ask questions, or teach with his own stories, or take a lot of time to be—really be—with them, unless it involves doing something physically active outside. Maybe that’s a typical “guy” quality. But I know plenty of fathers who take time to cultivate a relationship with their children’s hearts.
Our older one has accepted how his father is. Our younger one doesn’t let his dad get away with it sometimes. He will pull him to the bed to cuddle in the morning before school, or hug him out of the blue, or hold his face and look into his eyes and keep him there in that moment.
Neglect’s Toll on a Wife: Perfection’s Grip on My Husband’s Attention © 2023-2024 Lila Meadowbrook
